6/14/11 10:04 PM EDT
Taylor's behavior only grows stranger with the passage of time. I stop answering only as I notice both the cost of using my power and consequences of my actions are beginning to affect my lifespan.
"What, you're not g-gonna talk?" she asks. "Y-your autism m-makin' you f-freeze up?"
No," I reply. Taylor doesn't respond, or pause to relay her answer to her master, as before. She collapses, her anatomy unable to bear the strain of her poorly distributed bones. As she dies, she issues a command.
"Go to Noelle."
Having nothing better to do, I amble over to the position of this familiar cape.
She is a few blocks away, surrounded by legions of capes. Too late, I notice that the potential actions I can take which will not restrict my lifespan have drastically decreased in number.
There is a considerable amount of activity in the near vicinity, with numerous capes trading blows with those generated by 'Noelle's' power. The girl turns her enormous body to face me.
"Do you know how to fix me?" she asks.
The list of successful actions is small enough that I use my power to its maximum extent, analyzing her usage of the word 'fix.'
"Yes," I reply.
She waits expectantly, with screams and crunching noises filling the background.
"Are you going to wait all day or tell me?" she bellows.
"Tell you." I reply.
She waits for me to reply, becoming angrier by the moment.
"HOW?" she finally asks.
"There are several methods by which it may be accomplished."
She stomps in fury before calming herself. Finally, she devises a response.
"Do or say whatever you need to do to fix me IMMEDIATELY!"
I move forward, towards one of her vomiting mouths, my actions guided by my power. It takes every bit of effort I can muster, as the presence of some of her capes, the 'Eidolons' seems to be taxing my abilities merely by being present. Putting one of my hands on her rough skin; I access the shard to which she is connected.
It is dead, and contacting it is revolting. But I press on, finally severing the connection. Noelle is returned to a body which complies with her idea of being fixed, and the massive lower body to which she was attached begins to convulse and die. Noelle is injured by these movements. I myself make a hasty retreat, and the army of Eidolons lead the more stable clones away. Some of the others appear to be resorting to suicide tactics, many of them dismembering themselves upon a barrier of time-stopped spider silk protecting a group of heroes.
I return moments later, in my golden form, to wipe out those clones which remain.
Interlude: David
6/14/11 11:11 PM EDT
The grim silence is almost complete, broken only by the occasional sobs of one of the Travelers. All of them, conscious or otherwise, are restrained with Dragon-collars. All of them lie facedown in the ruined street, weapons drawn and aimed at them from all fronts.
That they would be executed ought to be without question; the fall of the Birdcage rendered imprisonment of dangerous capes an impossibility. It hadn't been done for one reason.
Him.
Well, not him, but a copy. One of the dozens of copies Noelle had managed to spit out. Eidolon had hoped to die, or finally boost his powers; it looked like Noelle would be doing both today. Her ability had spiked considerably, shortly after she'd swallowed him. By all accounts she'd seemed omniscient, commanding her minions so as to perfectly counter assault after assault. Perhaps she'd somehow devised a method of restoring her body? Fortunately she didn't seem to have retained control of her clones afterward.
Unfortunately, the clones seem to have done enough damage without even lifting a finger. Some of the Eidolons, it seemed, had divulged information about, among other things, Cauldron.
At this point, if he were to be honest, he would welcome death. He failed even when it came to containing the Birdcage breakout; for someone who went there willingly, Glaistig Uaine really didn't want to go back. Worse, she somehow knew about his powers. Now of course, having this information blared across the world was the least of his worries.
Alexandria's arguments aren't working. But a precog power Eidolon chooses suggests that they will survive this encounter. As he sees the faces of numerous precogs in the crowd slacken, he realizes this may not be a good thing.
Dragon's pronouncement of an Endbringer attack does not surprise him. The fact that two have materialized at once does.
Interlude: Weld
6/14/2011 11:30 PM EDT
He looks like Eidolon, but he's off. In his appearance, of course, but also personality-wise. Granted, Weld hadn't worked much with the Protectorate's most powerful cape, but from what he'd seen of him in the Leviathan fight, he wasn't quite as talkative as this.
Weld hopes he's way off with what he's saying, too.
"We created your kind," he says. "And yes, I mean you freaks. We changed you, and your memories. Sometimes we'd sell you off to someone needing an enemy, but mostly once we found we had no use for you we'd just chuck you into the garbage, where you belonged." Eidolon smiles as he says this, the visible portion of his oddly elongated face alight with real pleasure.
He's messing with me, Weld thought. Trying to get me to... to what?
On the one hand, who could prosecute Eidolon, in spite of his confession to crimes on a massive scale? But Weld couldn't think of any good reason for the hooded man to tell him, or anyone, any of this. It was as if Eidolon was trying to cause as much chaos as possible.
"I'm not going to take your bait," Weld replies as calmly as possible. The others, he knew, should be at his position soon, though most of them have no idea what's going on. From what Weld can work out, Eidolon is officially in Brockton Bay, not too far south of here, on classified business. "I know I can't beat you." Rumors had been spreading on the boards like wildfire. An organization called Cauldron, responsible for monsters. For the endbringers? It would explain why a new one had emerged. That the Triumvirate was embroiled in the mess was another rumor.
"No tricks here, tin man," Eidolon says easily. The hooded hero is far more casual than Weld had ever seen him. "Just thought ya oughta know." His grin widens. "Ah, the main event."
For a moment, Weld is struck with horror. Then he realizes that it can't possibly be the Simurgh; she has the proportions of a normal human woman. Nor is her face as artificial, she seems desperate, flailing, jabbing at Eidolon from a distance.
Eidolon gestures, and she slams face-first into the ground. Then she rises, her motion artificial, like a puppet. Eidolon looks at Weld expectantly, then scowls.
"Pathetic," he says. The pseudo-Simurgh collapses, shuddering, and Eidolon flies off. Weld approachs her.
"Please don't," she manages to gurgle out. He hadn't consciously realized he was moving to try to finish her off until she'd said it.
Interlude: Fortuna
?, ?
"No," Contessa reminds the Doctor. "I can predict Eidolon well enough, but he's technically immune to my power. And there's no way I can model these clones."
"I see," she murmurs. "Although, in some ways, this exceeds our wildest expectations. We always wanted another Eidolon.."
Contessa tunes out the Doctor's blather, even though she should at least point out that the destruction of the world seemed almost as likely at the hands of this swarm, whose powers, now spread across the world, effectively render her's useless, at least on Earth Bet. Doormaker will not create portals for them, but they have, it seems, all or part of the original's memories.
The Eidolons know where the base is. At least one of them will probably be able call up an interdimensional travel power.
Cauldron had done terrible things, to try and save just a bit of humanity. And now it looks like Scion will have nothing to destroy but a bunch of parallel, lifeless rocks.
6/14/2011 11:26 AM IST
It is an odd coincidence that Taylor, Lisa, and in fact, nearly all of my human associates are traveling towards the city I would have arrived at in any case. There are, it seems, multiple endbringers attacking simultaneously. It is not clear to me which I should strike at first, so I decide to comply with my human-origin instincts and go with the flow. As we descend on New Delhi, I contemplate that fighting and killing the newer endbringer will take a certain amount of time, since it can teleport freely. Based on the limited damage I can inflict on it while simultaneously obeying the order to help people, and the flightspeed of my golden form which is known to humanity at large, it will take approximately one hundred and forty four years to kill it.
I simulate attention to the speech Taylor is giving my human form, while I contemplate the total time it will take to kill off the other 19 or twenty. A pressing question, as nearly all of them are either active or nearing deployment.